“Is this not Mary’s son?” (Mark 6:3). This is an astonishing statement, one that cannot be easily dismissed. Calling a first-born Jewish male in Palestine by his mother’s name—that is, Jesus bar Mary, instead of Jesus bar Joseph—is not just unusual, it is egregious. At the very least it is a deliberate slur with implications so obvious that later redactions of Mark were compelled to insert the phrase “son of the carpenter, and Mary” into the verse.
